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  1. (1 other version)Probability in the Everett picture.David Albert - 2010 - In Simon Saunders, Jonathan Barrett, Adrian Kent & David Wallace (eds.), Many Worlds?: Everett, Quantum Theory, & Reality. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
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  • .A. Gallois - 2002 - Ruch Filozoficzny 3 (3).
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  • (1 other version)How Many Lives Has Schrodinger's Cat?David Lewis - 2004 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (1):3-22.
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  • Probability in deterministic physics.J. T. Ismael - 2009 - Journal of Philosophy 106 (2):89-108.
    The role of probability is one of the most contested issues in the interpretation of contemporary physics. In this paper, I’ll be reevaluating some widely held assumptions about where and how probabilities arise. Larry Sklar voices the conventional wisdom about probability in classical physics in a piece in the Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy, when he writes that “Statistical mechanics was the first foundational physical theory in which probabilistic concepts and probabilistic explanation played a fundamental role.” And the conventional wisdom (...)
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  • A subjectivist’s guide to objective chance.David K. Lewis - 2010 - In Antony Eagle (ed.), Philosophy of Probability: Contemporary Readings. New York: Routledge. pp. 263-293.
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  • Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.Lev Vaidman - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) is an approach to quantum mechanics according to which, in addition to the world we are aware of directly, there are many other similar worlds which exist in parallel at the same space and time. The existence of the other worlds makes it possible to remove randomness and action at a distance from quantum theory and thus from all physics.
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  • The quantum measurement problem: State of play.David Wallace - 2008 - In Dean Rickles (ed.), The Ashgate Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Physics. Ashgate.
    This is a preliminary version of an article to appear in the forthcoming Ashgate Companion to the New Philosophy of Physics.In it, I aim to review, in a way accessible to foundationally interested physicists as well as physics-informed philosophers, just where we have got to in the quest for a solution to the measurement problem. I don't advocate any particular approach to the measurement problem (not here, at any rate!) but I do focus on the importance of decoherence theory to (...)
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  • (1 other version)Probability in Boltzmannian statistical mechanics.Roman Frigg - 2010 - In Gerhard Ernst & Andreas Hüttemann (eds.), Time, chance and reduction: philosophical aspects of statistical mechanics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
    In two recent papers Barry Loewer (2001, 2004) has suggested to interpret probabilities in statistical mechanics as Humean chances in David Lewis’ (1994) sense. I first give a precise formulation of this proposal, then raise two fundamental objections, and finally conclude that these can be overcome only at the price of interpreting these probabilities epistemically.
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  • (1 other version)Self-locating belief and the sleeping beauty problem.Adam Elga - 2000 - Analysis 60 (2):143–147.
    In addition to being uncertain about what the world is like, one can also be uncertain about one’s own spatial or temporal location in the world. My aim is to pose a problem arising from the interaction between these two sorts of uncertainty, solve the problem, and draw two lessons from the solution.
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  • All the World’s a Stage.Theodore Sider - 1996 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (3):433 – 453.
    Some philosophers believe that everyday objects are 4-dimensional spacetime worms, that a person (for example) persists through time by having temporal parts, or stages, at each moment of her existence. None of these stages is identical to the person herself; rather, she is the aggregate of all her temporal parts.1 Others accept “three dimensionalism”, rejecting stages in favor of the notion that persons “endure”, or are “wholly present” throughout their lives.2 I aim to defend an apparently radical third view: not (...)
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  • Four Dimensionalism.Theodore Sider - 1997 - Philosophical Review 106 (2):197-231.
    Persistence through time is like extension through space. A road has spatial parts in the subregions of the region of space it occupies; likewise, an object that exists in time has temporal parts in the various subregions of the total region of time it occupies. This view — known variously as four dimensionalism, the doctrine of temporal parts, and the theory that objects “perdure” — is opposed to “three dimensionalism”, the doctrine that things “endure”, or are “wholly present”.1 I will (...)
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  • (1 other version)David Lewis’s Humean Theory of Objective Chance.Barry Loewer - 2004 - Philosophy of Science 71 (5):1115--25.
    The most important theories in fundamental physics, quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics, posit objective probabilities or chances. As important as chance is there is little agreement about what it is. The usual “interpretations of probability” give very different accounts of chance and there is disagreement concerning which, if any, is capable of accounting for its role in physics. David Lewis has contributed enormously to improving this situation. In his classic paper “A Subjectivist's Guide to Objective Chance” he described a framework (...)
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  • Counterpart theory and quantified modal logic.David Lewis - 1968 - Journal of Philosophy 65 (5):113-126.
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  • (1 other version)How to define theoretical terms.David Lewis - 1970 - Journal of Philosophy 67 (13):427-446.
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  • The ins and outs of Schrodinger's cat box: a response to Papineau.Paul Tappenden - 2004 - Analysis 64 (2):157-164.
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  • On the Plurality of Worlds.David Lewis - 1986 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 178 (3):388-390.
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  • (1 other version)Many Worlds: an introduction.Simon Saunders - unknown
    This is a self-contained introduction to the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is the introductory chapter of Many Worlds? Everett, quantum theory, and reality, S. Saunders, J. Barrett, A. Kent, and D. Wallace, Oxford University Press.
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  • (1 other version)”Relative state’ formulation of quantum mechanics.Hugh Everett - 1957 - Reviews of Modern Physics 29 (3):454--462.
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  • Occasions of identity: a study in the metaphysics of persistence, change, and sameness.André Gallois - 1998 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Occasions of Identity is an exploration of timeless philosophical issues about persistence, change, time, and sameness. Andre Gallois offers a critical survey of various rival views about the nature of identity and change, and puts forward his own original theory. He supports the idea of occasional identities, arguing that it is coherent and helpful to suppose that things can be identical at one time but distinct at another. Gallois defends this view, demonstrating how it can solve puzzles about persistence dating (...)
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  • Understanding Deutsch's probability in a deterministic universe.Hilary Greaves - 2004 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 35 (3):423-456.
    Difficulties over probability have often been considered fatal to the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. Here I argue that the Everettian can have everything she needs from `probability' without recourse to indeterminism, ignorance, primitive identity over time or subjective uncertainty: all she needs is a particular *rationality principle*. The decision-theoretic approach recently developed by Deutsch and Wallace claims to provide just such a principle. But, according to Wallace, decision theory is itself applicable only if the correct attitude to a future (...)
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  • Branching and Uncertainty.Simon Saunders & David Wallace - 2008 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (3):293-305.
    Following Lewis, it is widely held that branching worlds differ in important ways from diverging worlds. There is, however, a simple and natural semantics under which ordinary sentences uttered in branching worlds have much the same truth values as they conventionally have in diverging worlds. Under this semantics, whether branching or diverging, speakers cannot say in advance which branch or world is theirs. They are uncertain as to the outcome. This same semantics ensures the truth of utterances typically made about (...)
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  • Belief and the problem of Ulysses and the sirens.Bas C. van Fraassen - 1995 - Philosophical Studies 77 (1):7-37.
    This is surely a bit of Socrates' famous irony. He draws the analogy to explain how his friends should regard poetry as they regretfully banish it from the ideal state. But lovers were no more sensible then than they are now. The advice to banish poetry, undermined already by Plato's own delight and skill in drama, is perhaps undermined still further by this evocation of a 'sensible' lover who counts love so well lost. Yet Socrates' image is one of avowed (...)
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  • Probability in the Everett interpretation.Hilary Greaves - 2007 - Philosophy Compass 2 (1):109–128.
    The Everett (many-worlds) interpretation of quantum mechanics faces a prima facie problem concerning quantum probabilities. Research in this area has been fast-paced over the last few years, following a controversial suggestion by David Deutsch that decision theory can solve the problem. This article provides a non-technical introduction to the decision-theoretic program, and a sketch of the current state of the debate.
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  • (1 other version)Uncertainty and probability for branching selves.Peter J. Lewis - 2006 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (1):1-14.
    Everettian accounts of quantum mechanics entail that people branch; every possible result of a measurement actually occurs, and I have one successor for each result. Is there room for probability in such an account? The prima facie answer is no; there are no ontic chances here, and no ignorance about what will happen. But since any adequate quantum mechanical theory must make probabilistic predictions, much recent philosophical labor has gone into trying to construct an account of probability for branching selves. (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Chance in the Everett interpretation.Simon Saunders - 2010 - In Simon Saunders, Jonathan Barrett, Adrian Kent & David Wallace (eds.), Many Worlds?: Everett, Quantum Theory, & Reality. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    According to the Everett interpretation, branching structure and ratios of norms of branch amplitudes are the objective correlates of chance events and chances; that is, 'chance' and 'chancing', like 'red' and 'colour', pick out objective features of reality, albeit not what they seemed. Once properly identified, questions about how and in what sense chances can be observed can be treated as straightforward dynamical questions. On that basis, given the unitary dynamics of quantum theory, it follows that relative and never absolute (...)
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  • Can the Self Divide?John Perry - 1972 - Journal of Philosophy 69 (16):463.
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  • Chance in Boltzmannian Statistical Mechanics.Roman Frigg - 2008 - Philosophy of Science 75 (5):670-681.
    Consider a gas that is adiabatically isolated from its environment and confined to the left half of a container. Then remove the wall separating the two parts. The gas will immediately start spreading and soon be evenly distributed over the entire available space. The gas has approached equilibrium. Thermodynamics (TD) characterizes this process in terms of an increase of thermodynamic entropy, which attains its maximum value at equilibrium. The second law of thermodynamics captures the irreversibility of this process by positing (...)
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  • Language use in a branching universe.David Wallace - unknown
    I investigate the consequences for semantics, and in particular for the semantics of tense, if time is assumed to have a branching structure not out of metaphysical necessity (to solve some philosophical problem) but just as a contingent physical fact, as is suggested by a currently-popular approach to the interpretation of quantum mechanics.
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  • Saunders and Wallace on Everett and Lewis.Paul Tappenden - 2008 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (3):307-314.
    Simon Saunders and David Wallace attempt to use a modified form of David Lewis's analysis of personal fission to ground the claim that prior to undergoing Everett branching an informed subject can be uncertain about which outcome s/he will observe. I argue that a central assumption of this seductive idea is questionable despite appearing innocuous and that at the very least further argument is needed in support of it. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?
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  • (2 other versions)Chance in the Everett interpretation.Simon Saunders - 2010 - In Simon Saunders, Jonathan Barrett, Adrian Kent & David Wallace (eds.), Many Worlds?: Everett, Quantum Theory, & Reality. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
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  • Epistemology quantized: Circumstances in which we should come to believe in the Everett interpretation.David Wallace - 2006 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (4):655-689.
    I consider exactly what is involved in a solution to the probability problem of the Everett interpretation, in the light of recent work on applying considerations from decision theory to that problem. I suggest an overall framework for understanding probability in a physical theory, and conclude that this framework, when applied to the Everett interpretation, yields the result that that interpretation satisfactorily solves the measurement problem. Introduction What is probability? 2.1 Objective probability and the Principal Principle 2.2 Three ways of (...)
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  • (1 other version)Belief and the Will.Bas C. van Fraassen - 1984 - Journal of Philosophy 81 (5):235-256.
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  • (1 other version)Measurement outcomes and probability in Everettian quantum mechanics.David J. Baker - 2007 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (1):153-169.
    The decision-theoretic account of probability in the Everett or many-worlds interpretation, advanced by David Deutsch and David Wallace, is shown to be circular. Talk of probability in Everett presumes the existence of a preferred basis to identify measurement outcomes for the probabilities to range over. But the existence of a preferred basis can only be established by the process of decoherence, which is itself probabilistic.
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  • (1 other version)Can the world be only wavefunction?Tim Maudlin - 2010 - In Simon Saunders, Jonathan Barrett, Adrian Kent & David Wallace (eds.), Many Worlds?: Everett, Quantum Theory, & Reality. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
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  • Philosophy of quantum mechanics.David Wallace - 2008 - In Dean Rickles (ed.), The Ashgate Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Physics. Ashgate. pp. 16--98.
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  • Many Minds are No Worse than One.David Papineau - 1996 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (2):233-241.
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  • (1 other version)Everett and evidence.Hilary Greaves & Wayne Myrvold - 2010 - In Simon Saunders, Jonathan Barrett, Adrian Kent & David Wallace (eds.), Many Worlds?: Everett, Quantum Theory, & Reality. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    Much of the evidence for quantum mechanics is statistical in nature. The Everett interpretation, if it is to be a candidate for serious consideration, must be capable of doing justice to reasoning on which statistical evidence in which observed relative frequencies that closely match calculated probabilities counts as evidence in favour of a theory from which the probabilities are calculated. Since, on the Everett interpretation, all outcomes with nonzero amplitude are actualized on different branches, it is not obvious that sense (...)
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  • (1 other version)Decisions, Decisions, Decisions: Can Savage salvage Everettian probability?Huw Price - 2010 - In Simon Saunders, Jonathan Barrett, Adrian Kent & David Wallace (eds.), Many Worlds?: Everett, Quantum Theory, & Reality. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    [Abstract and PDF at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive] A slightly shorter version of this paper is to appear in a volume edited by Jonathan Barrett, Adrian Kent, David Wallace and Simon Saunders, containing papers presented at the Everett@50 conference in Oxford in July 2007, and the Many Worlds@50 meeting at the Perimeter Institute in September 2007. The paper is based on my talk at the latter meeting (audio, video and slides of which are accessible here).
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  • On schizophrenic experiences of the neutron or why we should believe in the many‐worlds interpretation of quantum theory.Lev Vaidman - 1990 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 12 (3):245 – 261.
    This is a philosophical paper in favor of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory. The necessity of introducing many worlds is explained by analyzing a neutron interference experiment. The concept of the “measure of existence of a world” is introduced and some difficulties with the issue of probability in the framework of the MWI are resolved.
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  • Quantum probability and decision theory, revisited [2002 online-only paper].David Wallace - 2002
    An extended analysis is given of the program, originally suggested by Deutsch, of solving the probability problem in the Everett interpretation by means of decision theory. Deutsch's own proof is discussed, and alternatives are presented which are based upon different decision theories and upon Gleason's Theorem. It is argued that decision theory gives Everettians most or all of what they need from `probability'. Contact is made with Lewis's Principal Principle linking subjective credence with objective chance: an Everettian Principal Principle is (...)
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  • (1 other version)On the Everettian epistemic problem.Hilary Greaves - 2006 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (1):120-152.
    Recent work in the Everett interpretation has suggested that the problem of probability can be solved by understanding probability in terms of rationality. However, there are *two* problems relating to probability in Everett --- one practical, the other epistemic --- and the rationality-based program *directly* addresses only the practical problem. One might therefore worry that the problem of probability is only `half solved' by this approach. This paper aims to dispel that worry: a solution to the epistemic problem follows from (...)
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  • (1 other version)Measurement outcomes and probability in Everettian quantum mechanics.David Baker - 2006 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (1):153-169.
    The decision-theoretic account of probability in the Everett or many-worlds interpretation, advanced by David Deutsch and David Wallace, is shown to be circular. Talk of probability in Everett presumes the existence of a preferred basis to identify measurement outcomes for the probabilities to range over. But the existence of a preferred basis can only be established by the process of decoherence, which is itself probabilistic.
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  • Identity and probability in Everett's multiverse.P. Tappenden - 2000 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 51 (1):99-114.
    There are currently several versions of Everett's relative state interpretation of quantum mechanics, responding to a number of perceived problems for the original proposal. One of those problems is whether Everett's idea is in accord with the standard 'probabilistic' interpretation implicit in the Born rule. I argue in defence of what appears to be Everett's original view on this. The contribution I aim to make is a more complete discussion of the central issues of the identity of objects and observers (...)
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  • Mind, Brain and the Quantum: The Compound "I".Michael Lockwood - 1989 - New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press.
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  • (1 other version)How to prove the Born rule.David Wallace - 2010 - In Simon Saunders, Jonathan Barrett, Adrian Kent & David Wallace (eds.), Many Worlds?: Everett, Quantum Theory, & Reality. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
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  • (1 other version)On the Everettian Epistemic Problem.Hilary Greaves - 2007 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (1):120-152.
    Recent work in the Everett interpretation has suggested that the problem of probability can be solved by understanding probability in terms of rationality. However, there are *two* problems relating to probability in Everett --- one practical, the other epistemic --- and the rationality-based program *directly* addresses only the practical problem. One might therefore worry that the problem of probability is only `half solved' by this approach. This paper aims to dispel that worry: a solution to the epistemic problem follows from (...)
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  • Naturalizing Metaphysics.Simon Saunders - 1997 - The Monist 80 (1):44-69.
    The problem of measurement is usually thought of as a problem of physics. Certainly the straightforward solutions modify or supplement the basic equations. One might instead conclude that theories are only instruments for coördinating observable phenomena, and perhaps that is what Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation really comes down to. For most of us this sort of “philosophical” resolution of the problem of measurement is not acceptable.
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